It is impossible to set precise limits to the extension, influence and
expressions
of the Benedictine spirit. Benedictinism, as the abbots themselves have
acknowledged, has expressed itself in 'great diversity
...in a wide variety of forms.' St John's Collegeville is quite
different from New Camaldoli which differs notably from Mount Saviour,
etc. Yet all these communities are Benedictine, at least in the
fundamental sense that they all seek to follow the Rule, which in its flexibility and
'indetermination offers the possibility of many adaptations.'

And in the broader sense of the spirit of the Rule, one can
argue that the
Benedictine ethos extends quite beyond cloister limits to inspire a
variety of
forms of Christian living. The Anglican spiritual theologian Martin
Thornton,
for instance, insists that 'the genius of St Benedict cannot be confined
within the walls of Monte Cassino or any other monastery; the Regula
is not only a
system of monastic order, it is a system of ascetical
theology, the basis of which
is as applicable to modern England as it was to sixth century Italy.'

Can the Benedictine spirit even inspire and characterize a Church as such,
indeed an entire communion of Churches? Several Anglican
theologians respond

Icon of St. Benedict
Dormition Abbey, Jerusalem

affirmatively in reference to their own Communion. This article
proposes to examine this thesis and to offer some Roman Catholic
reflections
about its ecumenical implications in general and some Benedictine thoughts
about its challenge specifically to the Benedictine world.

A Church of Continuities
Most Roman Catholics probably still think of the Anglican Church (in the
United States known as the Episcopal Church) as arising in the sixteenth
century and as a direct consequence of certain marital problems of Henry
VIII.
But Anglicans themselves resolutely propose another conception of their
Church quite different from this simpler interpretative model. John
Macquarrie, for instance, one of the most influential of living Anglican
theologians, [writing in 1970] affirms: 'Anglicanism has never considered
itself to be a sect or denomination originating in the sixteenth century.
It
continues without a break the Ecclesia Anglicana founded by St
Augustine thirteen
centuries and more ago . . . Our present revered leader, Arthur
Michael Ramsey, is reckoned the one
hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury, in direct succession to Augustine
himself.'

In this view, then, the Anglican Church was founded by St Augustine of
Canterbury (a monk, it might be noted here, sent to England by the
great monastic
Pope Gregory I).

The Anglican Bishop Stephen Neill insists in the same way as Macquarrie
upon this continuity of Anglicanism with the pre-reform Church in England,
only he takes us back even further into the Celtic origins of Christianity
in
England; he writes: 'The [Anglican] has never imagined that the
Reformation
was anything other than a Reformation. It was in no sense a new beginning.
The English Churchman regards himself as standing in the fullest
fellowship and
continuity with Augustine and Ninian and Patrick and Aiden and
Cuthbert and perhaps most of all, the
most typically Anglican of all ancient saints, the Venerable Bede.'

Thus, the Anglican insists that if one wishes seriously to come to terms
with
Anglicanism, he is going to have to go back to its true roots and study
Augustine, Ninian, Patrick, Aiden and
Cuthbert (all of them monks), and especially that most Benedictine of
these founding fathers, also 'that most typically Anglican of all ancient
saints, the Venerable Bede.'

The Anglican theologian Anthony Hanson notes that there is nothing
particularly, new about this insistence on Anglican continuity with the
pre-Reform
Church: 'Anglican apologists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
constantly maintained that the Church of England was not a
breakaway Church, like the Evangelical
Church in Germany or the Reformed Church in France. It was the same
continuous Catholic Church that had at the Reformation "washed its face."'

And the Roman Catholic scholar of Anglicanism George Tavard, citing
Anglican theologians of the sixteenth century regarding the 'uninterrupted
succession' of their sacraments, theology and faith, acknowledges that
among
the Anglican writers of that period 'this theme constantly recurs.'

Thus, to the traditional polemical Roman Catholic query of' where was the
Anglican Church before Henry VIII?' the Anglican pointedly responds: 'In
England, where else?' And he proposes this response very sincerely, it
should
be noted, not as a rhetorical trick but as a true expression of his
experience of the sacramental, liturgical, theological and devotional
continuity of the post-Reform Anglican Church with the pre-Reform English
Church. The Roman
Catholic may have some difficulties in accepting tout court and
without
qualification this Anglican thesis; but correct ecumenical method requires
him
to recognize that at least this is the way Anglicans ('high Church' and
'low',
although emphasis might differ) sincerely experience their own Church
life.
And it is primarily with this Anglican experience and self-identity that
Roman
Catholics must come to terms in a true ecumenical dialogue, and not just
with their own conception of what Anglicans must be.

This point is clearly decisive for the theme of this article, for if
Anglicans
understand their Church to be rooted in the early and medieval centuries
of
English Christianity, these centuries are characteristically monastic.

Icon of St. Columba
by the hand of a Sister of the Community of the Holy Spirit

Monastic Roots
The first chapters of a typical Anglican history of the English Church are
filled with towering monastic figures of Celtic Christianity: St Ninian,
who brought
a missionary form of monasticism to England before the end of the fourth
century. St Germanus, who like Ninian was a disciple of the monasticism of
St
Martin of Tours, and who visited England in the fifth century: 'British
Christianity, he found, was virtually indistinguishable from the fierce
monasticism introduced from southern
Gaul some time earlier.' Thus English Christianity already had a monastic spirit in the fifth century. St
Patrick, an English youth
carried off into slavery in Ireland who escaped to France and there lived under Germanus in the
monastery of Auxerre for more than a decade. 'Consequently, when in 432 Pope
Celestine sent him to Ireland, the Christianity he brought was
rather exclusively monastic.' Thus Celtic
Christianity, soon to spread to
England in a very pronounced way, was essentially monastic, the abbot ruling
supreme even over bishops. St Columba, who in the seventh century crossed
from Ireland into western Scotland, carried with him the heritage of Celtic
monastic Christianity. He founded the famous missionary monastery of lona, and 'it
was from this centre that most of the remaining districts of England were
won to the Christian faith after the breakdown of Edwin's Christian kingdom
in 632.'

This Celtic form of Christianity failed, however, to have an evangelizing
impact on the newly-arrived Anglo-Saxons. A new monastic missionary
endeavour was called for, and with rare acumen Pope Gregory the Great
responded. The Anglican Bishop Stephen Neill in his thoughtful History
of
Christian Missions
notes that Gregory's endeavour 'was fresh and remarkable
since, in contrast to the haphazard way in which Churches had generally
grown
up, this was almost the first example since the days of Paul of a
carefully
planned and calculated mission.' Bishop Neill also underlines the
specifically
monastic
character of the mission since 'Gregory, himself a monk, had seen the
vital part that the monk could play in missionary work among the new
nations.'

Augustine not only brought the spiritual teachings of his monastic father
to
England but also followed Gregory's pastoral directives after the first
monks had settled in Canterbury. Gregory wrote to a perplexed Augustine
who had
asked what he should do about all the pagan usages of the Anglo-Saxons:

The temples of the idols among that people should on no account be
destroyed...it is a good idea to detach them from the
service of the devil, and dedicate them to the service of the true God. And since
they have a custom of sacrificing many oxen to demons, let some other
solemnity be substituted ...so that they may learn to
slay their cattle in honour of
God and for their own feasting . . . If they are allowed some worldly pleasures in this way, they
are more likely to find their way to the true inner joys. For it is doubtless impossible to eradicate all errors at one
stroke . . . just as the man
who sets out to climb a high mountain does not advance by leaps and
bounds, but goes upward step by
step and pace by pace. It is in this way that the Lord revealed himself to
the Israelite people.

One wonders if the roots of the Anglican spirit of tolerance,
reasonableness
and comprehensiveness cannot already be detected here. These are monastic
virtues also, it might be noted. Gregory in his Vita Benedicti
(written just two
years before the mission of Augustine) praises St Benedict's Rule
for its balance and
lucidity, two qualities that characterize his own pastoral and spiritual
theology.

Augustine had also written to Rome about his perplexity at the variety of
liturgical forms and customs: 'Since we hold the same faith, why do
customs vary in different Churches, why does the method of saying Mass
differ in the
holy Roman Church and in the Churches of Gaul?' Gregory's response, not
what one might expect from Rome, is almost Anglican in its serene
insistence
on ecclesial pluralism:

My brother, you are familiar with the usage of the Roman Church in which
you were
brought up. But if you have found customs, whether in the Church of Rome
or of
Gaul or of any other that may be more acceptable to God, I wish you to
make a careful
selection of them, and teach the Church of the English whatever you have
been able to
learn with profit from the various Churches... For things should not be
loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things.'

Anglican ecclesiology, with its biblical and Patristic cast, and nourished
by its own
experience as an international communion of autonomous Churches,
tends 'to favour very strongly the
recovery of the old vision of sister Churches within a single family.' If
there is such a thing as a characteristically monastic ecclesiology, it certainly tends in a
similar way to stress the importance of local and regional Churches. The
above text of the monk and pope who was so little concerned with centralization and
Romanitas reflects this monastic-Anglican ecclesial perspective.

Augustine
and his fellow missionary monks, following the directives of
Gregory, not only founded monasteries
and schools, but established parishes, dioceses and provinces, laying the very
foundations of the Ecclesia Anglicana of the middle ages and of the post-Reform period.

Thus Gregory's monks evangelized the newly-arrived Anglo-Saxon peoples
as
the Celtic monks had evangelized their predecessors, so that these two
fundamental roots of the English Church and nation both bear a clearly
monastic
stamp.

But one might pose the objection that if the specific topic of this
article is the
Benedictine
spirit of Anglicanism, Celtic monasticism is not Benedictine, nor
(as some scholars insist) is Gregorian monasticism. But it has been
pointed out
that the problem is somewhat anachronistic, since monasticism did not tend
to
accept a single rule as binding until the Carolingian reform, and the
category 'Benedictine' appeared only many centuries after St Benedict and
the Rule. St Columba and
St Augustine would not have thought of themselves as
'Benedictine', it is true, but neither would St Bede, St Dunstan or St
Anselm. They were simply monks
seeking to live faithfully their particular monastic calling, in a spirit of kinship with
their fellow monks who had preceded them. And such a sense of
continuity and kinship, characteristic in general of
monasticism, has a particularly solid
'objective' basis in the case of English monasticism, because Celtic and
Gregorian monasticism were assimilated intolater English 'Benedictine' experience
through the synthesizing genius of the Venerable Bede.

Icon of St. Gregory the Great and
St. Augustine of Canterbury
by the hand of a Monk of Chevetogne, Belgium

Venerable Bede
The Anglican historian Bishop J. Moorman notes that Bede 'has rightly been
called the "Father of English History"' and that his History of the
English Church and People still remains the basis of modern
knowledge of the
English
Church in the early period. And it was almost exclusively through Bede
that
the English Church of the middle ages and of the Reform had access to its
origins.

St Benedict
Biscop, the learned monastic founder of Wearmouth and
Jarrow, the two abbeys in which Bede
lived his entire monastic life, decided that these two houses should follow
the Rule of St Benedict. Consequently, according to our
modern religious categories, this monastic life was
'Benedictine'—but never in the
exclusive sense, for 'it came to combine all that was best in the Benedictine and Celtic
ideas of monasticism.'

Bede himself, in his History, enthusiastically championed the
monastic and
ecclesial forms brought to England by the monks of Pope Gregory, whom he
venerated as the 'apostle' of the English Church.

The Venerable Bede

But he also
sought to be fair to the Celtic heritage and dedicated many
chapters to its saintly monk missionaries. In this way, Bede's
History constitutes a decisive synthesis of the Celtic,
Gregorian and 'Benedictine' heritage, as
notes the medieval scholar Mary R.
Price: 'Under Bede's eyes, as he toiled away in his cell, the divided peoples
of the "island lying in the sea" were being welded into a nation,
and through his eyes and by his pen we can see this
happening. We see also the fusion of the free-lance monasticism of the
Celtic monks with the more
regular discipline of the Benedictine rule, of the
Celtic Church with
the Roman.'

The moment
is decisive for the English Church, as notes another Bede
scholar: 'The centuries on which Bede
concentrates are a crucial and formative period in our island history, during
which the future shape and pattern of the English Church and nation
were beginning to emerge.' And it is precisely
through Bede's interpretative and
synthesizing work that these key formative centuries are not only

not lost to the English Church, but
take on form, life and significance. Bede is fairly rigorous
regarding the facts of his narration, as is widely acknowledged,
but his approach is obviously not that of positivist historicism. He
explicitly offers his own theological interpretation of the
history he is treating, and it is
clearly a monastic reading in the light of salvation history.

The monk, through an assiduous lectio divina, seeks to be shaped by
the
Word of God to the point that salvation history becomes the key by which
he
penetrates his own spiritual existence and also human history. The
importance
of the Word of God for Anglican spirituality, theology and doctrine is
also well
known. Bede's biblical-patristic-monastic optic renders early English
history Christianly
significant, and he delivers this meaningful heritage of Celtic,
Gregorian and 'Benedictine' monastic
Christianity to the later
English Church.
It is also in this respect that he can be judged 'that most typically
Anglican of all
ancient saints.'

Of course, the Anglo-Saxon Church knew other gigantic monastic figures,
such
as Alcuin, who made a decisive contribution to the Carolingian
renaissance, and Dunstan, whose
brilliant statesmanship guaranteed the relaunching of the
English Church and nation after the onslaught of the
Vikings.

But if Anglo-Saxon Christianity can be understood only in the light of the
key element of monasticism, William the Conqueror opened up still new
avenues of development, and 'with the coming of the Normans monachism
went ahead rapidly.' Indeed, the very first Archbishop of Canterbury named
by William was the Abbot of Caen, Lanfranc, who embarked on a decisive
reorganization of the English Church, including the definitive
subordination
of the See of York to Canterbury, worked effectively for the renewal of
monasticism, and also helped William maintain the fullest possible
independence of the English Church from Rome. This is naturally an aspect
of his contribution that is noted and appreciated by Anglicans, and that
indicates, they argue, that it did not all begin with Henry VIII and
Archbishop Cranmer.

Monasteries
and monastic schools multiplied, and brilliant monastic
Churchmen and theologians such as
Anselm continued to emerge. Bishop Moorman notes that the monastic
presence was not at all limited to the cloister or school, but often extended to the
very heart of the Church diocese: 'Many monks subsequently became bishops, and
England developed the curious
custom, elsewhere practically unknown, of the "Cathedral priory" where the
cathedral of a diocese was
manned not by secular clerks but by professed monks. About half of the great
cathedral churches in
England were monastic,
the prior and monks taking the place of the dean and canon.'

What the medievalist, Friedrich Herr, affirms of monasticism in the middle
ages generally is thus true in a particular way in England: monasticism
constituted 'the heart of the Church.' Thus Anglicanism, in insisting on
its
continuity with Norman, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Christianity, all
decisively
characterized by the monastic experience, realizes that the formative
years for
the development of its spirituality, liturgy, theology and polity were
monastic
years.

The ruins of
Glastonbury Abbey,
one of the oldest and most influential Benedictine houses in medieval
England. In 1539, the monastery was dissolved and the last Abbot was
executed, along with two other monks. The remaining monks were
dispersed, the treasures of the monastery were carried off, and the
buildings left to fall into ruin.

The flowering of the monastic life continued into the 1100s; and as Bishop
Moorman notes, the 'vast number of monastic houses founded in or about the
twelfth century shows this type of life was highly valued.' Still,
monasticism
had reached its peak, and a general decline began. The foundation of the
Franciscan, Dominican and other new orders, the new spirit of
scholasticism,
the Black Death, the monastic decadence linked to excessive wealth and
many other complicated causes led to a notable decline in monastic
vocations. By the
beginning of the sixteenth century 'the great houses were half empty
...the shell of English monasticism was too
big for its body.' This is the general context of that drastic step of the
dissolution of the monasteries. One of theprincipal authorities on the
dissolution writes with vividness: 'In April 1536, at the end of the twenty-seventh year of
the reign of King Henry VIII, there were, scattered throughout England and
Wales, more than eight hundred religious houses, monasteries, nunneries and
friaries, and in them there lived close on 10,000 monks, canons, nuns and
friars. Four years later, in April 1540, there were none.'

Of course, in the post-Reform period monasticism and the dissolution were
often topics of controversy between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. All
sides
seem generally agreed now that, on the one hand, monasticism had seriously
declined and, on the other, Henry and Cromwell were quite interested in
the
financial, and not just the moral and theological, implications of the
suppression of the religious houses.

In any case, the fact of the dissolution obviously poses a major
difficulty for
the thesis of the fundamentally Benedictine spirit of Anglicanism; for if
one
accepts and defends this thesis, how is he to explain the fact that
monasticism
was the first thing to go at the moment of the Anglican Reform, and that
Anglicanism was able to live on splendidly for centuries without any form
of
monasticism whatever?

Thomas Cranmer,
Archbishop of Canterbury and
architect of the first EnglishBook of Common Prayer

Book of Common Prayer and Benedictine Spirit
The first part of the answer that many Anglicans and others propose
regarding
this objection is that monasticism was not just eliminated by the Reform.
Rather, the essentials of the Benedictine spirit were rendered immediately
accessible to the entire Church through the key and characteristic work of
the
Anglican Reform, the Book of Common Prayer. It is extremely important to
note
this decisive fact about the Anglican Reform: at its centre and
guaranteeing its spirit stands not a
towering reformer (a Luther, a Calvin), not a theological doctrine or a moral
code—but a book of liturgical prayer. In this fundamental respect alone
the Anglican reform has a clearly Benedictine spirit to it.

But quite beyond this, if one examines the basic principles that shape the
Book of Common Prayer, note many Anglican writers, one will find that they
are specifically Benedictine. Martin Thornton, for instance, argues that
the
spirituality of the Rule is built upon three key moments: the
community Eucharist,
the divine office, and personal prayer of a biblical-patristic-liturgical
cast; but these
same three elements, and in the same hierarchy of importance, also
constitute the substance of the Book

of Common Prayer.
Thus, notes the same Thornton, 'from the point of view of ascetical
theology,
these two documents [the Rule and the Book of Common Prayer] have a
remarkable amount in common, and in a very real sense, Caroline and modern
England remains "the land of the Benedictines."'

Monks and Anglicans take these three principles rather for granted and
tend
to assume that they will constitute the three central moments of any
Christian
spirituality; but this, of course, is not the case. Indeed, they are so
little evident
to some Protestant traditions that, as Thornton points out, wars have been
fought over them: 'Let it be remembered that the seventeenth-century
battles
between Puritan and Caroline churchmen were fought over the Prayer Book,
especially over "set prayers." They were battles for and against
Benedictine
principles.'

The Anglican monk and spiritual theologian, Bede Thomas Mudge, notes that
not only Protestantism deviated from this Benedictine-Anglican model,
but
also much of Roman Catholic spirituality in its later development,
characterized by 'extra-liturgical
devotions such as the Rosary and Benediction filling the needs of most lay-people.'
This reflection poses for the Roman Catholic Benedictine the startling
thought that perhaps Anglican spirituality is closer to his own experience
than many forms of Roman Catholic spirituality. The Benedictine spirit is certainly at
the root of the Anglican way of prayer, argues Dom Mudge, in a very special and
pronounced manner:

The example and influence of the Benedictine monastery, with its rhythm of
divine
office and Eucharist, the tradition of learning and 'lectio divina', and
the family
relationship among Abbot and community were determinative for much of
English
life, and for the pattern of English devotion. This devotional pattern
persevered
through the spiritual and theological upheavals of the Reformation. The
Book of
Common Prayer . . . the primary spiritual source-book for Anglicans . . .
continued
the basic monastic pattern of the Eucharist and the divine office as the
principal public
forms of worship, and Anglicanism has been unique in this respect.

Roman Catholic Benedictines who have tried to encourage lay groups to pray
the psalms as a regular basis for their spiritual life know how arduous
that
pastoral effort can prove. Thus we should admire the more 'Cranmer's work
of
genius in condensing the traditional scheme of hours into the two Prayer
Book
offices of matins and evensong.' Peter Anson (Roman Catholic) and A. W.
Campbell (Anglican), in their classical study of religious communities in
the
Anglican Communion, note that the Anglican Church as such is thus a kind
of
generalized monastic community in that 'the Book of Common Prayer
preserved the foundations of Christian
monastic prayer, but simplified it in such a way that ordinary layfolk could
share in this type of worship.'

Since Benedictine spirituality was rendered accessible to the Anglican
faithful through the Book of Common Prayer, this monastic form of prayer
inevitably tended to stimulate a desire for monasticism in its specific
form; as Anson and
Campbell note: 'The Book of Common Prayer retained the
framework of choral worship; a method
of prayer which could only find its most perfect development in
communities of men and women who were free to give up much of their time to ordered
worship in common.'

Indeed, already in the seventeenth-century great Anglican spokesmen such
as John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh, were lamenting the dissolution of
the monasteries:

First, we fear that covetousness had a great oar in the boat, and that
sundry of the
principal actors had a greater aim at the goods of the Church than
at the good of the
Church... Secondly, we examine not whether the abuses which were then
brought tolight were true or feigned; but this
we believe, that foundations, which were good in their original institution ought not
to be destroyed for accessory abuses...I do not see why monasteries might not
agree well enough with reformed devotion.

And another great seventeenth-century divine wrote even more pointedly
that
'seeing that [monastic life] is a perfection to Christianity, it is
certainly a blot on
the Reformation when we profess that we are without it.'

Anglican divines such as Cosin, Herbert, Laud, Taylor and others produced
a whole literature of personal and liturgical prayer that enriched
Anglican
spirituality even more and recovered additional elements of the monastic
heritage. This rich spiritual atmosphere nourished one of the most
extraordinary experiences of quasi-monastic life, that of Little Gidding.
Nicholas Ferrar and his extended family of about thirty in the first part
of the
seventeenth-century dedicated themselves to a community and liturgical
life in
a very intensive way indeed; and 'like the majority of medieval choir
monks
and nuns, the community knew the entire Book of Psalms by heart.' With the
death of Ferrar and the intensification of the Puritan wars, the Little
Gidding
experience had to be abandoned some twenty years after its foundation; but
its
deep contemplative spirit proved to have a very great influence on devout
Anglicans such as George Herbert and Isaac Walton, up to T. S. Eliot in
our own time.

During the rest of the seventeenth, and throughout the eighteenth and
first
half of the nineteenth centuries, there were regular Anglican proposals
for the
reestablishment of the monastic life. 'Again and again,' note Anson and
Campbell, 'we come across instances of writers deploring the lack of
monastic institutions
in the Church of England.' These two scholars of Anglican
monasticism trace these proposals
through sixteen pages of their study, and the compendium of
authors cited includes some of the most
notable

Title page of the 1549Book of Common Prayer

figures of Anglicanism in these centuries: John
Evelyn, Dean William Sancroft, Bishop Thomas Ken, William Law, Bishop George
Berkeley, Dr Samuel Johnson, and Poet Laureate Robert Southey.

In July of 1833 John Keble preached the famous Oxford sermon that
according to Newman and others marked the beginning of the great Anglo-Catholic
renewal. In the context of this movement there was a whole explosion
of monastic-religious foundations that restored the specifically monastic
experience to the Anglican Communion.

Of course,
there are specifically Benedictine houses in the Anglican
Communion, such as Nashdom Abbey in England and St Gregory's Abbey in
Michigan, for monks, St Mary's Abbey and the Priory of our Lady, in
England, for nuns and others. But what
about the spirituality that
characterizes the other numerous communities and congregations, such as
the Society of St John the
Evangelist, the Community of the Resurrection, the Society of the Sacred Mission, the
Order of the Holy Cross?

Dom Bede Thomas Mudge notes that to overcome anti-Catholic suspicions,
'the first communities went out of their way to justify their existence by
a great
devotion of works of charity: social work with the poor, the operation of
'penitentaries' for wayward women, and nursing were favourite
occupations.'
One thinks of certain analogies with the actively-orientated Benedictine
communities of monks and sisters in America. But, notes Mudge regarding
the
Anglicans (and here also one can note the parallel):

While the works of the early communities were important and needed, it was
the
spiritual and communal life which drew applicants, and in this atmosphere
the
basically monastic pattern of Anglican spirituality, which had survived
three
centuries after the Reformation, had its inevitable effect. No matter how
active the
apostolate of the community, the corporate recitation of a full form of
the Office was
present in all of the communities from the very start...It is an unusual Anglican community which has not had as part of
its tradition the singing of the Office to the plainsong melodies, a good deal of corporate silence, and a tradition of
the cultivation of an intense devotional life, based on Scriptural
and Patristic sources. The traditional
emphasis on monastic learning and writing also appeared.

Thus, in the context of a wide variety of foundations and apostolates,
'the
pattern has, in fact, remained surprisingly consistent and true to
traditional
monastic roots.' And in the recent wave of religious renewal, which has
swept
over Anglican communities as it has Roman Catholic, the Anglican tendency
has been precisely to intensify the monastic identity, moving beyond
certain
Victorian forms of religiosity:

Having often begun on an active pattern, the communities have gradually
developed
a more traditionally monastic life, and this has been done as the result
of a consensus
of the members of the community . . . few people have entered the
communities
without some leaning, at least, towards monastic observances. This has
caused the
outward forms of the recent renewal to appear conservative by Roman
Catholic standards . . . Anglican religious have, for the most part,
deliberately chosen the
observances of traditional monasticism and are not eager to be rid of
them.

The thesis of Mudge is that almost all Anglican religious communities have
a
basically monastic, Benedictine spirit in them, simply because they are
Anglican and thus inheritors of a precise spiritual (Benedictine)
tradition:

Not infrequently these days, Anglican religious are invited to meetings of
Roman
Catholic religious, and often asked to describe their community. Normally
the reply
is that there is no exact counterpart to our life in the Roman Catholic
Church... But
when asked to describe the life in detail, more than once the reply has
been 'Oh,
you're Benedictine, of course'...It is a pattern that has been inherited
from a nation whose monks, scholars, teachers, historians, rulers, missionaries and
martyrs were often either
Benedictines themselves or under direct Benedictine influence, and the
pattern has proved surprisingly
stable, through the changes and reforms of many generations.

Some Ecumenical Implications
The thesis of the basically Benedictine spirit of the Anglican Community
in
general, and of Anglican religious communities specifically, obviously
constitutes a healthy challenge for Roman Catholics, and especially for
Roman
Catholic Benedictines. It means that there is a basic common experience
underlying Anglican and Roman Catholic spirituality; since monasticism
predates our divisions, it constitutes a kind of 'ecumenical anamnesis'
that
makes present and living a shared heritage, and also opens up fresh
horizons
for ecumenical hope and commitment.

Certainly Benedictines have played a key role in the development of the
Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue from the very beginning. Dom Leander,
President of the English Congregation of Benedictines and Prior of Douai
in
the seventeenth century, was the first of a series of papal agents sent to
England
to explore possibilities of dialogue; his intuitive understanding of
Anglicanism has received warm praise from Anglican ecumenical scholars.

Closer to our own time, Dom Lambert Beauduin of Chevetogne, founder of
the ecumenical review Irenikon, opened up new possibilities for the
dialogue with his decisive paper 'The Anglican Church, United not
Absorbed,' read by
Cardinal Mercier at the pioneering Malines Conversations. On the Anglican
side, the ecumenist Dom Benedict Ley and the liturgist Dom Gregory Dix,
both
of Nashdom Abbey, contributed notably to the Anglican-Roman
Catholic dialogue.

But beyond specific personalities, Anglicans have noted that the
Benedictine
commitment to the liturgical renewal and to a more Christ-centred,
biblical
and Patristic approach to Christian life contributed significantly to
preparing
the way for Vatican II, which has narrowed the gap between Anglicans and
Roman
Catholics to an extent 'not even the most sanguine could have
foreseen.' Of course, monastic
contacts and exchanges have multiplied since the Council, and organizations such as
the Fellowship of St Gregory and St Augustine are dedicated to promoting
permanent contact at the monastic and also parish levels.

The three
theological documents published by the Anglican-Roman
Catholic International Commission
(ARCIC) indicate substantial theological accord regarding many areas of the
faith. The Roman Catholic ecumenist, Jean Tillard, has argued that the next step
must be 'a spiritual coming together . . . the reunion of two separated churches
is not a mechanical process. And it cannot be the result only of
theological discussions and official authoritative decisions. It is primarily a spiritual
matter.'

If this 'spiritual coming together' is the key to further progress, what
if (as
suggested by this article) Roman Catholic Benedictines already share
a common
fundamental spiritual experience not only with Anglican Benedictines, but
also with the Anglican family as such? If such were the case, both 'sides'
would
want to deepen their awareness of this sharing and its important
ecumenical
implications.

The centrality of the Eucharist and the Word, the importance of praying
the
Psalms in community, the need to give personal prayer a solid biblical-patristic-liturgical
nourishment—all these elements lead to an experience of
Christian spirituality for which the emphasis is communitarian and
familial, notes Thornton. Dom Bede Thomas Mudge likewise insists on this
theme of
domestic community:

There has
also been found in traditional Anglican piety a distinct strain of
'homeliness' as it is sometimes called. A warm, tolerant human devotion
based on loving persuasion rather than fiery oratory is part of the
Anglican temper. Historically, the
Anglican clergy ... have been very much part of the domestic scene in the villages and parishes where they
have served, and have often been loved and revered. The Anglican liturgical
calendar has more commemorations of faithful pastors, such as George Herbert, than
of fiery missionaries, and even Anglican martyrs have commonly been of gentle
disposition. Anglicanism has always been more attracted by the image of the
Church as family, rather than militia, and the similarity evoked to a community of
monks, living as a family, under an abbot who leads them as a father, is not
accidental.

It is important to reflect deeply on this shared experience of Christian
community, for it might constitute the substance of that communion, of the
koinonia
which is the very goal of the ecumenical movement.

The koinonia theme has become central for the Anglican-Roman
Catholic
dialogue. In the recent ARCIC statement on authority, for instance,
koinonia is
one of the key terms which keeps emerging to explain the precise context
and
scope of Church authority.

The
koinonia ideal is treasured in a particular way by the Anglican
Communion, which has always understood itself not primarily as a
juridical entity or societas,
bound together by canon law, doctrines and organs of authority, but
rather as a bond of the faithful, as a sacramental-liturgical communion of sister Churches.

But of course Benedictine and monastic life is also essentially
koinonia,
recalling the ideal of the apostolic community as presented in the Acts of
the
Apostles. St Pachomius, father of monastic cenobitic life, and his
disciples
referred to monastic life simply as 'holy koinonia.'

Anglican and Roman Catholic Benedictines already share the substance of
this 'holy koinonia,' and thus constitute in a real sense a little
vanguard of the
ecumenical movement. But quite beyond this, it would seem that Roman
Catholic Benedictines share the substance of their experience of Christian
community with the faithful of the entire Anglican Communion. This shared
experience would qualify monks for a special mediating function, that of
tendering Anglicanism more available to the Roman Catholic brethren, on
the one hand, and explaining certain aspects of Roman Catholic life to
Anglicans,
on the other.

But before undertaking these special functions, the first task facing
Roman
Catholic Benedictines is simply to deepen their awareness of this shared
koinonia
with Anglicans, to live profoundly this communion so that it can bear
its own special fruit. One obvious component of such a growing process is
study;
monks can become more familiar with the three ARCIC documents and
with the basic Anglican-Roman Catholic ecumenical literature, which is not
impossibly extensive. The study of Anglican spiritual writers and
theologians
can, as Thomas Merton has noted, be of great benefit for Roman Catholic
monks, not just for their ecumenical preparation but for their monastic
and
Christian growth.

Another important component of this growth in awareness is hospitality,
an
intrinsic part of Benedictine life. The monastery can receive individual
Anglicans or parish or monastic groups, offering monastic space for
retreats,
conferences, etc. Such ecumenical hospitality is already fairly widespread
in
America, but it can certainly be even more utilized as a key means for
developing Anglican-Benedictine contact
at the inter-personal and grassroots level. Monks can also (depending on the
particular observance of their own house) reciprocate these visits,
and themselves call upon neighbouring
Episcopal parishes and Episcopal religious communities.

As contacts grow, it might become possible to offer an ecumenical
witness
through joint social, pastoral or mission work, depending on the specific
situation of the monastery and of the Episcopal group.

When an ecumenical relationship has sufficiently matured, the Roman
Catholic monastery might consider entering into a 'covenant’
rapport with an
Episcopal religious community or parish; such covenants permit a deeper,
more stable communion and commitment to develop.

Detail - Icon of St. Benedict
Dormition Abbey, Jerusalem

The chief means of growing in communion, and also its principal fruit,
will
certainly be the fellowship of prayer, in the fuller sense of
praying for one
another and also praying with one another, at least on some
occasions. Apart
from the delicate question of eucharistic sharing, Benedictines have
special
possibilities of praying with Anglicans, because the monastic hours of
Lauds
and Vespers (after the Roman Catholic adoption of the vernacular) are so
similar to the Episcopal services of morning and evening prayer that each
community can feel quite at home in the context of the liturgy of the
other.

Every aspect of community prayer has its ecumenical sense: prayer of
petition can focus on the unity we seek which will be primarily the
gift of
Christ's Spirit and not the result of our bargaining and diplomacy; such
ecumenical prayer is also prayer of contrition, recognition of our grave
sins,
especially of omission, that have

caused and now maintain the divisions of Christ's people; prayer of
commitment is also involved, which pledges our
time and energy in this work of reunion in diversity; and such prayer is,
finally,
prayer of hope and praise and thanksgiving, in recognition of all God's
gifts to his various
communities in the past and of the marvellous grace of full
reconciliation which awaits us.

The basic bond of the Anglican Communion is, and always has been,
community prayer; this is also true of the Benedictine family. As we pray
for
and with each other in the unity of Christ, we rediscover what we are and
experience what we shall be.

Dom.
Robert Hale is a Camaldolese Benedictine monk at the
New Camaldoli
Hermitage in Big Sur, California. At the time this article was
published in 1980 in the English journal Christian (Vol. 5 No. 3),
he was prior of a joint monastery with the Anglican Order of the Holy
Cross. The article is reproduced here by the kind permission of Fr.
Hale.